The Rebellion of the American States

Get the Fed out of our states, pockets, kitchen, schools, businesses, and off our land.

By de Andréa

As a follow up to my articles titled “State Sovereignty” and “The EPA: The Shadow Government Of Tyranny” some states like Utah now want the Federal Government out of, well…out of their states…

The federal government controls more of Utah – on a percentage basis than Utah does – more than 47 other states, putting its brand on some 35,000 square miles of Utah state land.

In what could be described as a Sagebrush Rebellion on steroids, a Utah resolution advancing quickly in the state Legislature tells the feds to relinquish their control over their land.

The Utah State Jurisdiction of Federally Managed Lands Joint Resolution reads something like this. --- "Be it resolved, that the Legislature of the state of Utah calls on the United States, through their agent, Congress, to relinquish to the state of Utah all right, title, and jurisdiction in those lands that were committed to the purposes of this state by terms of its Enabling act compact with them and that now reside within the state as public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management that were reserved by Congress after the date of Utah statehood. Be it further resolved, that a copy of this resolution be sent to the Secretary of the United States Department of Interior, to the United States Director of the Federal Bureau of Land Management, to the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, to the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and to the members of Utah's Congressional Delegation."

Its chief sponsor is Rep. Roger Barrus, and it already has been approved in the House and advanced to the Senate.

While a resolution does not have the force of law, it was through resolutions that many of the Issues or articles through which states are in rebellion against their federal government today got started.

Those issues include firearms freedom acts, rejection of REAL ID, rejection of federal marijuana laws and a refusal to apply interstate commerce limits to intrastate commerce.

Some states like Arizona, Montana and now joined by Tennessee are in the process of proposing to set up state commissions that would evaluate federal mandates for their constitutionality. In other words the States will retroactively scrutinize all legislation and the enactment of Federal departments both past present and future and decide whether the State will adhere to, or ignore or nullify federal decisions, laws, statutes or mandates etc.

It is in the West where most of the federal government's 650 million acres of land is located. Some 22 million is in Utah.

The lands are used as military bases, parks, reservations and are leased for forestry and mining operations. In Nevada, the federal government controls 84 percent of the land, in Alaska, 69 percent, and in Utah 57 percent. Other states are Oregon, 53 percent; Idaho, 50 percent; Arizona, 48 percent; California, 45 percent; Wyoming, 42 percent, New Mexico, 41 percent and Colorado, 36 percent. Quite a land grab for a government that constitutionally is allowed only to own land that is necessary to run the government, such as property under and surrounding the capital building and the Whitehouse. Oh yes, and military property and the National park system.

House endorsement came on a 61-9 vote.

Agencies with say-so over the acreage include the BLM, Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of Defense, Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation.

Barrus told the Salt Lake Tribune, "We call on Congress to revisit how public lands are being managed by the BLM."

The resolution cites the Constitutional Convention's aims that "state governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty and independence which they before had and which were not exclusively delegated to the United States Congress."

It explains that "the federal trust respecting public lands obligates the United States, through their agent, Congress, to extinguish both their governmental jurisdiction and their title on the public lands that are held in trust by the United States for the states in which they are located."

If that is not done, the resolution said, "the state is denied the same complete and independent sovereignty and jurisdiction that was expressly retained by the original states, and its citizens are denied the political right to establish or administer their own republican self-governance as is their right under the Equal Footing Clause."

The resolution explains that use of the more than 22 million acres at issue "has been eroded by an oppressive and over-reaching federal management agenda that has adversely impacted the sovereignty and the economies of the state of Utah and local governments."

Now, suddenly, it explains, “the Department of Interior has arbitrarily created a new category of lands, denominated Wild Lands, [read “The EPA: The Shadow Government Of Tyranny” ]and has superimposed these mandatory protective management provisions upon BLM operations and planning decisions in violation of the provisions of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the provisions of the Administrative Procedures Act, and Presidential Executive Order 13563 concerning openness in policymaking."

The result is Utah officials feel the state is better off running land inside its borders itself than having bureaucrats in Washington making those decisions.

The Sagebrush Rebellion developed on a small scale during the 1970s when federal bureaucrats imposed a large number of new rules and regulations on lands throughout the West, interrupting and interfering in business and other uses of the lands that had been going on for years.

The current general antipathy toward Washington probably is expressed most strongly in legislation under development in Tennessee, Arizona and Montana.

Generally, the state proposals would establish a commission for the review of "all federal laws and regulations for constitutionality." State officials then would decide whether they qualify and could be in effect in the state. In other words the Federal Government operates at the pleasure of the States.

The plan has been promoted by The Patriots Union, a Wyoming-based organization that is taking on the battle against what it considers an overreaching Dictatorship in the federal government.

A large number of states are battling Washington over specific issues that state lawmakers and governments believe they should decide.

Attorney Stephen Pidgeon, a spokesman for the Patriots Union, said states are starting to assert their rights under the Constitution.

He said the idea is as old as the administration of Jimmy Carter. At that time it was called the "Sagebrush Rebellion," when Western states fought back against Washington's control of land inside their borders, especially oil-rich and coal-filled land resources.

"There is no constitutional right for the federal government to hold natural resources, federal parks," he said. "For states such as Utah, which has been fighting with the federal government to regain ownership of its own lands, [this nullification plan] offers a strong argument to chase the government off its property."

The issue is being forced into the headlines by President Obama's law that effectively nationalizes the decision-making process for health care.

But states also have raised the issues of currency, the REAL ID Act, marijuana laws, guns, health care regulation, and others.

"Under the Constitution states are required to use coinage of gold and silver," Pidgeon said. "But the federal government has inflicted on the states the fraud of a debased fiat useless currency. This is the best mechanism that has been developed to date to put the beast back in the cage," he said.

Officials with the Patriots Union say dozens of states are working on the idea of a nullification plan.

Major components of the proposal are:
Establish the constitutional grounds for state nullification;

Establish a swift method for nullification of any unconstitutional federal act, past, present or future;

Establish that only the U.S. Supreme Court has "original jurisdiction" under Article III of the U.S. Constitution;

Establish that the people (not the courts) have the final word;

Establish the very limited role and power of the federal government under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments;

Reject modern expansions of power via misinterpretations of the commerce, welfare, and supremacy clauses

Regain state and citizen control over the runaway Fed.

This legislative proposal is a huge leap beyond what has developed in the states where officials are telling Washington to back off.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Will this rebellion lead to the threat of secession and another American Civil War? Well that is obviously up to the Federal Government. The United States Government has for at least the last hundred years or so, been building an unconstitutional National centralized power structure that has like never before, now evolved into a National Dictatorship and again into a socialist economy.

At the risk of be called simplistic, a little bit if in your face history. Once this Constitutional Republic was dismantled by the Seventeenth Amendment, and unlimited funds were available to it by the Sixteenth Amendment and the Federal Reserve Act was passed all in 1913, the foundation of tyranny was laid in the form of, and under the disguise of, a true Democracy. A National Democracy was something the Framers as well as the people shuddered to think about, because it was well understood that democracy always opens the door to tyranny. Something I guess we have forgotten in our socialistic greed of something of nothing.

By 1932, with the destruction of the capitalistic free economy, the results of the new democracy of 1913 were evident and America was introduced to its first potential dictator. Franklin Delano Roosevelt whose social programs including the New Deal nearly brought a once free economy into National Socialism.

The cost of the Second World War however could not be sustained by a failing socialist economy, and Capitalism was once again reborn. But the damage to the political system had been done and after the War the National Government power structure began once again to emerge out of the damaged Constitutional Federal System.

Growing ever larger and more powerful by the day, and fed by an unlimited supply of the people’s money the new National Central Government plundered and grew its way into what it is today.

With the deceptive promise of “Change” the people elected the second potential dictator of America, Barack Hussein Obama. And true to his promise of “Change” he has changed what was left of this free capitalistic economy and the guaranteed rights of a Federal Constitution into a Socialistic National State of absolute power and corruption. That is until now…

Is there a remnant of the American spirit of freedom still alive? Are the States beginning to rebel against this corruption and tyranny? For nearly one hundred hears the creep of social tyranny has been incremental and surreptitious. And then in less than two years this Muslim Dictator Barack Husein Obama has totally ignored the Federal Constitution and any other law that stood in his way of absolute power. This sudden “Change” may have just been too bold too blatant and too fast, the sleeping giant of freedom may have just awakened…

One can only hope!

de Andréa